In a cloud computing environment, numerous cloud service requests are serviced in relatively short periods of time. In such an environment, it is highly beneficial to automate placement, rendering, and provisioning of cloud services within and between data centers, so that cloud service requests can be accommodated dynamically with minimal (and preferably no) human intervention.
Examples of cloud services include: compute services, network services, and storage services. Examples of network services include Layer 2 (L2) virtual local area network (VLAN) or Layer 3 (L3) virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) connectivity between various physical and logical elements in a data center, Layer 4 (L4) to Layer 7 (L7) services including firewalls and load balancers, Quality of Service (QoS), access control lists (ACLs), and accounting. These cloud services are supported by individual cloud elements including servers, racks of servers, racks of servers that may be grouped into clusters, and data center PODs, i.e., a collection of racks or servers and/or clusters.
Network management of cloud computing systems currently use orchestration tools which learn about all cloud elements within the data center, make all placement decisions for all cloud elements within the data center, and render and provision the cloud service request by communicating directly with each cloud element in the data center. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that effectively managing cloud elements can be particularly challenging.